The Unilever Series: Ai Weiwei

This weekend I visited the Tate Modern with a particular interest in seeing the installation in the turbine hall by Ai Weiwei.
I had hoped that it would have been more interactive, but unfortunatley you are not allowed to touch the seeds. There is an accompanying video in which Ai Weiwei shows the process and techniques used to produce these seeds. This makes the whole exhibit seem a lot more impressive. On their own, if glanced at quickly you could mistake it for gravel.

"Sunflower Seeds is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. However realistic they may seem, these life-sized sunflower seed husks are in fact intricately hand-crafted in porcelain.
Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space, the 100 million seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape.
Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports. Sunflower Seeds invites us to look more closely at the ‘Made in China’ phenomenon and the geo-politics of cultural and economic exchange today."
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unileverseries2010/default.shtm